Opening Strategy

[damnrunner]

As we now have a leader chosen we should probably begin discussion on what our opening moves will be. Of course a lot will depend on the start location but we can have some discussion beforehand. At this point a big question is what to do for the 1st tech. We start with Ag and Hunt which allows us to tech:

Fish
Wheel
Pottery
AH
Archery
Myst
Mine

I think Mining or AH will probably be the best start tech. I would probably go with AH to find out if we have nearby horses (also any nearby cows/pigs make this doubly attractive)

Nearby seafood resources might make Fish a good option, but this is rarely the case.

Pottery and the Wheel are also attractive – but we should be able to get these soon enough before our 1st worker is done with other improvements.

I don’t like Myst as I don’t think we will get an early Rel since teams that start with Myst (or those with Fin) will be best able to pick up Hindi and Buddhism. We could get lucky and get one, but being Charismatic, having an early Rel is also less important.

I also don’t like archery as we should hope to build immortals for early fog busting. Of course no nearby horses will potentially change this. Even still, we may want to detour to tech Archery anyway just to make sure the Barbarians spawn archers. I seem to recall some discussion about this not happening in the last game. Archery will also be useful when we get around to upgrading Immortals to HA’s – but that will be a while off.


Initial production. A worker is almost always the best option.

 

[Sommerswerd]

As we now have a leader chosen we should probably begin discussion on what our opening moves will be. Of course a lot will depend on the start location but we can have some discussion beforehand.

I agree, some preliminary discussion will be good.

I think Mining or AH will probably be the best start tech.

Agreed, if there are cows or pigs I think we have to go AH. If not then maybe beeline BW for chops then AH but it depends on alot of other things.

Nearby seafood resources might make Fish a good option, but this is rarely the case. Pottery and the Wheel are also attractive

If there are 2 seafood and no land we have to go fish first. We also need fish relatively soon to send out a scout wb. Wheel only if we get a horse from AH, Pottery seems like low priority TBH

I don’t like Myst

Agree for the reasons you gave

I also don’t like archery as we should hope to build immortals for early fog busting.

Agree, Archery is a waste. What happened in the last game, and what WILL happen again in this one is that barb Archers do not appear until 51%(IIRC) of the teams (4 teams) have Archery. It Works the same way for barb Axes, galleys, etc. Human players RARELY prioritize Archery, so we wont be seeing barb archers. What we will see is barb Axes b/c humans prioritize BW.

Initial production. A worker is almost always the best option.

Agreed

I also want the Great Wall to get a jump start on Espy points and so that the Immortals are not stuck on barb busting duty, but can scout for allies instead. Maybe we can squeeze out 3 or 4 nicely spread out cities and then get G Wall to give us some great breathing room. Since we are not CRE, maybe a chopped Stonehenge will save us the trouble of having to build monuments.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1. Livestock ---> AH
2. Fish resource(s), weak land food ---> Fishing
3. Grain resource only ---> Mining

We also want the wheel and BW somewhat early, but not as opening techs (well BW we can't get as an opening tech).

This is a big map, but we better make SURE of that if we want to open worker 1st in MP. If we open worker first and someone decides to attack us with initial warrior on contact, we're dead.

Monarch barbs are easily dealt with using spawnbusting. If other teams are deficient in this regard, the barbs that do spawn will head their way. If they are not, there will be very few barbs with which to content. There's no excuse to for not spawnbusting in MP...spawn busters are also sentry nets, which we need.

Since they aren't raging barb pressure won't be an issue until well after 2000 BC on monarch. If we can get horse or copper (or maybe even iron) in our first 5 cities, we can probably take care of barbs with warriors exclusively, though of course a strategic resource would be nice for more security and capturing barb cities.

 

[mariogreymist]

I play a lot with Cyrus/Darius and here's my $.02:

If there are hooves in the bfc, AH first. Exposing horses before placing the second city has big advantages for Persia.
Without hooves, but with 2+seafood, fishing first for obvious reasons.
No hooves, no fishes: mining>BW>AH while settling a second food rich site and putting the 3rd on a strategic resource.

Like TMIT, I am wary of worker first, even though Persia has excellent worker techs for doing this. All of our talk and care could be moot with one savage warrior move. If the capital won't be visible from the "nooks" in the bfc, then by all means worker first. Otherwise, I say warrior first.

 

[Loev]

Like TMIT, I am wary of worker first, even though Persia has excellent worker techs for doing this. All of our talk and care could be moot with one savage warrior move. If the capital won't be visible from the "nooks" in the bfc, then by all means worker first. Otherwise, I say warrior first.

I agree, if the capital can be seen outside our borders we must go warrior first, otherwise we go worker.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Careful demo analysis by other teams might well betray our lack of warrior. I might not be up to snuff like the top notch analyzers of demo are, but I know enough that if they see a rival minimum and average, they can likely figure out if a hunting civ doesn't have a warrior yet. If they have someone on consistently, they could narrow it to us directly...if I hadn't lurked on team Cav previously, I'd not have been aware of this. As it stands now, however, I'm paranoid because it is in fact possible for someone to hand us an early L if they observe the demo screen and their starting warrior is lucky enough to make it past animals.

We'll have to see what kind of start we get, but we do have to be careful.

 

[nabaxo]

I say warrior first. You can never be too paranoid in multiplayer.

Update: Now that we have a list of the other leaders, we maybe should be looking at the potential candidates of allies.

Here's the list:

Mavericks: Gandhi
AMAZON: Cyrus
Sirius: Willem van Oranje
CDZ: Ragnar
Merlot: Pacal II
Quatronia: Hannibal

 

[Sommerswerd]

Hmmm OK... Well I guessed 2 out of 5, that aint bad. Almost all FIN opponents, no surprise there.

Well the nice thing is we are guaranteed a techmonger or a tech-subsidizer ally, hopefully 2 of the latter and 1 of the former.

 

[nabaxo]

Two other half-warmongers in that bunch...Hmm, this will be interesting.

 

[damnrunner]

@ sommers
With respect to Stonehenge - do the free monuments stick around after SH become obsolete? If so we certainly don't want to build it as then we will miss out on the +1 happiness from building monuments. GW could be useful but it should not be built mainly for the esp benefit. It could be very helpful in eliminating barbarian issues - but our UU should handle barbs just fine. But any discussion on wonders is pretty premature at this point.

Thoughts on early city placement - coastal cities should be on hills when possible. It also may make sense to build more inland cities to avoid viking raiders.

worker vs. warrior. I am one to go for the gamble of worker 1st. Though pre building a warrior for 1-2 turns so that it can be quickly completed might be an option. Also demo analysis by other teams is really not needed. They know we started with a scout so if they see out capital what down side is there to declare war and check if we have a warrior defending the capitol. None really other than pissing us off a bit.

 

[nabaxo]

SH will go obsolete at the same time monuments go obsolete afaik.

 

[remake20]

Tech first: AH, we need to explore our land and get Immortals ASAP for fog busting. Then we can hopefully get an early tech alliance. And next it depends on our start. We should get a thread from DMCW with our start and we can discuss there.

Warrior vs. Worker: I'm 80% sure I want a worker, I have to see our start, but unless we seem to have no need for a worker right away, then we build a worker. I don't think a worker would be very important, because if we start close enough to an opponent that they can invade with their first warrior, it will be a horribly small map and I know the map makers wont give us that. I would think we don't need another warrior until like our third build.

City placement: On a hill, with a good balance of food and production. I would give other suggestions, but I need to know what our start looks like.

 

[SilentConfusion]

Careful demo analysis by other teams might well betray our lack of warrior. I might not be up to snuff like the top notch analyzers of demo are, but I know enough that if they see a rival minimum and average, they can likely figure out if a hunting civ doesn't have a warrior yet. If they have someone on consistently, they could narrow it to us directly...if I hadn't lurked on team Cav previously, I'd not have been aware of this. As it stands now, however, I'm paranoid because it is in fact possible for someone to hand us an early L if they observe the demo screen and their starting warrior is lucky enough to make it past animals.

We'll have to see what kind of start we get, but we do have to be careful.

It is true that good demo analysis can tell if a warrior has been built, and I think that most people will be trying to pay attention to demographics in the very early game. Some teams will lose interest as the game goes on and the calculations become more complex, but in the beginning people will certainly be looking at the Soldier score on the demo screen and will see an increase of 2k. While logging in between people's turns can give us extra information and allow us to narrow down who is responsible for some of the demo changes, the thing about warriors being built is that everyone's warriors are built when the turn rolls over, so all at the same time. You can't use the logging in between people's turns to see who got a warrior. The things you can notice mid turn are city settling, whipping, tech acquired through trade or from a hut, or military lost due to barbs or war. However some things can be told from the lowest rival value about teams with only hunting as TMIT mentions. The good news is we can tell what information they can tell about us in most cases by looking at the demo screen ourselves and we can take this into consideration. Hopefully our scout will be able to locate any wandering warriors or neighboring lands to get some kind of early warning.

worker vs. warrior. I am one to go for the gamble of worker 1st. Though pre building a warrior for 1-2 turns so that it can be quickly completed might be an option. Also demo analysis by other teams is really not needed. They know we started with a scout so if they see out capital what down side is there to declare war and check if we have a warrior defending the capitol. None really other than pissing us off a bit.

Pissing another team off early can be a really bad move. I certainly wouldn't do it just to look at someone's capitol.

 

[damnrunner]

SH will go obsolete at the same time monuments go obsolete afaik.

They go obsolete but we still keep the +1 happiness form Char right?

 

[damnrunner]

Pissing another team off early can be a really bad move. I certainly wouldn't do it just to look at someone's capitol.

I would take that risk for the chance to capture an early capitol.

 

[remake20]

I think I am against rushing an opponent. Making them angry and probably angering all of the other teams too. I am against rushing.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think I am against rushing an opponent. Making them angry and probably angering all of the other teams too. I am against rushing.

They were probably talking about other teams' logic toward rushing us.

If we get a chance to land a kill-shot, we should do it, but otherwise we should war at more opportune times.